I need your help with something personal
Why I'm asking the Product Coalition community to vote
I’ve been nominated for Thought Leader of the Year in the Thinkers360 2026 Annual Awards, and I want to tell you why this matters to me — and why I think it matters for this community.
The Numbers Behind the Nomination
I sat down last week and pulled the actual data on what Product Coalition has done since I started it in 2015. The numbers honestly shocked me:
3,870 articles published across Medium and Substack
Nearly 10 million views (9,860,219 to be exact)
3.67 million reads — people who actually engaged with the content
100+ podcast episodes featuring product leaders from companies you know
8,500+ newsletter subscribers opening our emails twice a week
11 years of continuous publishing without a break
Our most-read article — “10 Fun Virtual Icebreakers to Take Remote Working to the Next Level” — hit 656,324 views during the pandemic. It wasn’t a product management framework. It was a piece that helped people feel connected when the world fell apart.
Our second most-read — “So You Want To Manage A Product?” — has been read by 254,746 people, many of them at the exact moment they were deciding whether to pursue this career.
“How to Write Epics and User Stories” sits at 208,543 views — a practical guide that gets shared in Slack channels and onboarding docs at companies I’ll never even know about.
What This Nomination Actually Means
Thinkers360 is the world’s premier B2B thought leader platform. Their annual awards recognize people who’ve made genuine, sustained contributions to their field — not just viral moments, but years of showing up.
The process works like this:
Public voting (now through April 30) determines the top 3 nominees in each category
Final judging by Thinkers360 Ambassadors selects the winner
Winners announced at the virtual ceremony in Fall 2026
I’m nominated in the Thought Leader of the Year category — the biggest individual award they give.
Why I’m Asking
I’ll be honest: asking for votes feels uncomfortable. Product Coalition has always been about the community, not about me.
But here’s what I’ve realized: a win here doesn’t just validate me. It validates the model.
Product Coalition was built on a bet that the best product thinking comes from practitioners sharing openly — not from consultancies, not from credentialed gatekeepers, but from people doing the actual work. Every article published by a first-time writer. Every podcast guest who shared a real failure story. Every newsletter reader who forwarded an issue to their team.
Winning Thought Leader of the Year would tell the world that community-driven thought leadership works. That you don’t need a book deal or a TED talk to shape how an entire industry thinks. You need consistency, generosity, and a community that cares.
How to Vote
It takes about 2 minutes:
Go to the voting page: https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/annual_awards/voting
Create a free Thinkers360 account (they require this for voting integrity — no spam, I promise)
Find “Jay Stansell” under the Thought Leader of the Year category
Click Vote
Voting is open until April 30, 2026.
A Thank You, Regardless
Whether or not I win this thing, I want you to know: the last 12 years have been the most fulfilling work of my career. Not because of view counts or download numbers, but because every week I get messages from product managers who say this community helped them.
That’s the real award.
But if you’ve got 2 minutes and you think what we’ve built here matters — I’d be grateful for your vote.
Thank you for being part of Product Coalition.
Jay